Dampers, or shock absorbers, are well known and widely applied in, for instance, a variety of vehicles like cars, truck, buses and trains. The dampers are designed to provide a desired damping behavior between parts moving with respect to one another. Damping can be chosen to be stiff or soft by the specific design of the damper. More complex dampers have been proposed, which are, for instance, stiff dampers but soft at the start of a motion to be damped or provide a frequency selective damping behavior. Each such damper will have its own damper architecture dedicated to the functioning of the damper. Each architecture requires its own specific parts. Any required changes in the damping requirements may require a redesign of the damper and amendments of quite a few if not all parts of the damper. Each damper design and damper characteristics will requires their own dedicated parts.
The damper characteristics are generally implemented in the design of the piston. The various requirements will yield complex piston designs with a considerable building height. The larger building height of the piston will result in a reduced working stroke of the damper at a same height of the damper or to a longer damper at a same working stroke. Preferably one would like to have a piston with a small building height to have to longest possible working stroke at a given height of the damper. Present piston designs of complex dampers generally require longer damper heights or provide a shorter working stroke.
Currently, various different design concepts are required to obtain dampers or pistons with a linear damping behavior, blow-off type dampers or pistons, dampers or pistons requiring only rebound forces, etcetera, whereas it would be very advantageous to have a piston architecture concept that allows incorporating various, including even the most difficult damping characteristics, which is not feasible at all with known piston architectures.
EP 2 108 858 A2 discloses a shock absorber with a piston having a two-member housing. A first member of the housing is intended to move along a cylinder wall of the cylinder of the shock absorber with a seal in between. The first housing member is hollow with an open bottom end that is closed by a second member, or cover.
US 2015/0152936 A1 discloses a shock absorber with a piston having a piston body consisting of three members that are mounted on top of each other. The top and bottom members are mounted against opposing ends of an intermediate member.